Chapter 1

"Your turn. Take knife. You hide 25 hours. We chase. We find. We kill. Go now."

The ogre, that's what I called the ETs who had invaded our base on Wolf-439 iv, handed me a large knife similar to what we humans called a Bowie knife. Wolf-439 iv was a recently occupied planet, at least by the humans, in the Wolf-439 system. We were on the fringe of human expansion, about 300 light years from home. We were there as a scouting party to see if the planet was worth exploiting, and it looked pretty good, so far. That is, until the ogres showed up.

We knew next to nothing about the ogres. They were not native to this planet, and probably not to the Wolf-439 system. We tried to be friendly at first, but to an ogre, killing you immediately was considered a friendly gesture. We lost almost all of our contingent before we figured that out. Anyway, I was one of four grunts captured. I'm Sgt. Andrew Higgins, and I think that I am lucky to be alive.

For some reason, the ogres were not interested in questioning us, they just wanted to play with us. We were tossed into cells and fed something that I suspect was human flesh, but I could not tell for sure. Anyway, I have been in this cell for four sleep cycles, but I do not know how that corresponds to days. This planet's day lasts just under 25 hours and has a gravity of .98g. The atmosphere is 27% oxygen, 72% nitrogen, and the rest is various inert gasses, so humans can live off it once they get acclimated to the additional oxygen level.

I was still wearing my combat uniform, so I was not completely helpless without the knife, but I was not going to point that out to the ogres. Yesterday, they implanted something under the skin of my left shoulder near my collarbone. I guess that it is a tracker of some sort, so I am going to dig it out as soon as I possibly can. I would not put it past them to cheat on the tracking part of the game.

The ogre walked out of my cell chuckling to himself. Well, I hope I had time to set up a few surprises for him. The cell door was left open and so was the door at the end of the corridor. I hurried down that way, and soon found myself outside. I guess the ogres like swamps because they had parked their spaceship directly in the middle of one. I ran down the ramp before anyone had a chance to change his mind and wound up wading in water up to my knees.

My first goal was to get out of sight of the ogres' spaceship and to dig out whatever it was that they implanted in my shoulder. I headed for a little mound of land that had the local equivalent of trees growing from it. That would be out of the direct sight of the ogres, I hoped, and would give me a place to sit down while I did the gizmoectomy. I could also look around to see my best chance of escape.

Well, it took about 35 minutes to dig that thing out of my shoulder, and every minute hurt worse than the one before, but I was not going to give in if I could help it, and kept digging. I had a vague plan for the gizmo, so I dropped it into my pocket. I still had a small first aid pack so I treated my wound as best I could and started walking in the direction that I remembered as having the most dry land.

Fortunately, we had mapped this area pretty thoroughly, and I had always had a good memory for maps, so I had a good idea of what would be best for me. I wanted to stay under the cover of trees so that the ogres could not track me from the air, but I was caught at cross purposes: I wanted to be tracked well enough for me to get close enough to them to kill them off. I have a strong lineage of Chiricahua Apache blood, and the thought of revenge for the killing of my friends ran through me like a river of fire.

I laid my first trap within two hours of leaving that damned cell. There was a small puddle of water across my path, and I had a strong feeling that the ogres would take the opportunity of walking through it. Therefore, I paused long enough to set out a series of punji sticks I cut from a plant that looked a lot like bamboo. Obviously, there could be no genetic relationship, but it looked enough like bamboo for me to call it that.

I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this trap because of it being built upon speculation, but I did have high hopes for it. I hid the evidence of my work and headed out in my original direction. So far as I knew, the ogres had not found our base camp, and I was hoping that was true. If I lived that long, tomorrow I would head for it in a circuitous route, hiding my path as best I could, because there were a few items there that I wanted to pick up. My true prize, if I could find it, would be the combat shotgun that operated on compressed air. I had actually managed to kill two ogres with one before I was captured, so I knew that it worked. I had not been able to kill more because of the wild charge put on by nearly 25 ogres that simply overwhelmed us.

I hurried as fast as I could to a place suitable for my next trap. This was going to be a more elaborate trap baited by the implanted gizmo, and it was going to take several hours to build. At last, I reached my trap location and set to work. This trap consisted of a flat platform with bamboo spikes on the underside. It would be suspended from a tree limb and set to fall when the trigger was tripped. The bait would be set at the trigger point, and I hoped that one of the ogres would bend over to pick it up. That would release the spiked platform to fall on his back.

Fortunately, I finished the construction and installation before dark and was able to find a place to sleep reasonably safe from discovery just in case the ogres had lied to me. Food was going to become a problem before long. A human could eat the local flora and fauna without danger, except there were some vitamins missing that had to be supplemented by pills from the base. That was the overriding reason that I had to find the base in reasonably good condition.

I managed to quell my curiosity about the efficacy of my traps and to head toward the base. The going was slow because I wanted to cover my tracks as best I could. My God! Was I lucky! The base was in first class condition and had not been disturbed. No other humans were around, but that was not surprising. I found several bottles of the vitamin supplement and dropped them into my pockets. There was enough to last one man several years, so I was home free on that subject.

I broke into the armory and picked up one of the special shotguns. I also took four of the replacement tanks and a pump for recharging the tanks. The pump could be operated on human power, so I did not have any trouble from that angle. The biggest problem was ammunition. I took 200 rounds with me of mixed solid slug and buckshot. By this time, I was loaded with about as much as I could carry. I picked up a couple of canteens for water, but I did not take any food: that I would collect as I needed it, though I did eat a big meal before I left the base.

Now was the time to head back to see how my pursuers were managing. As I suspected, I found their trail and it was running straight for where I had left the trap baited with the tracking gizmo. The trail led straight as an arrow to the first trap. From what I could read, I had caught at least one ogre there. The ground was churned up with multiple footprints as would have been made by a group of people helping a compatriot in trouble. Okay, that was good for my ego, but I was not sure how much trouble it had caused the ogres, other than the one who had been injured.

I put on a little speed and caught up to the hunters as they got close to the last trap. One of them was constantly referring to a box in his hand, and he led the way directly to the trap. Aha, I was right! They were a bunch of cheats!

I stayed well in the background as they approached the trap. The ogre with the box walked up to the bait and bent over to pick it up. That released the trigger and the platform of spikes came crashing down on his back. He let out a mighty scream of pain just before he died. I could tell from the way the rest of the ogres acted that all of the fun had gone out of the game.

They snatched up their weapons and formed a defensive circle around their fallen comrade. I had decided to use solid shot for the beginning of the campaign, so I fired a slug into an ogre on the far side of the circle. He screamed and blood gushed from the hole in his back. As he fell, he turned enough for me to see the exit hole, and it was gushing even more blood.